George Orwell’s dark fairy tale, Animal Farm,
featured a
revolution by the livestock against a bad farmer. The revolt was
inspired by the phrase, “All
Animals Are Equal”. By the novel’s end, however, corrupt pigs had
changed the motto:

“All Animals Are Equal – But Some Are More Equal Than Others.”

What does this have to do with Missouri? Well, among other
things, it turns out that our state legislature has its own “Animal
Farm” system for representing us.

In the General Assembly, you see, all representatives and
senators are equal, but some are more equal than others.

We were taught in school that our legislature is democratic
– that every district has an equal say. My representative, for
instance, carries the same influence as yours does.

Unfortunately, this “feel-good” message couldn’t be further
from the truth. Voters in the House Speaker’s district have a lot more
influence than voters in other districts. The same goes for the Senate
President Pro Tem, or legislators who act as committee chairs, or party
caucus leaders, all of whom have more “muscle” to get what they want
for their district at the expense of their neighbors.

Instead of an assembly of equals, our
state legislature is organized like a kingdom. Just
like kings, the House Speaker and Senate President keep court. They
hand out favors to their nobles, who in turn keep firm control over the
peasant-legislators of their party.

All rhyming aside, the Speaker holds god-like power over
the life of a bill. According to the Missouri Constitution, a bill must
go to a committee. By House rules, the Speaker gets to appoint all of
the committee chairs and vice-chairs. When a bill is ready to be
assigned to a committee, the person who decides which committee gets
the bill is – you guessed it – the House Speaker.

Past Speakers have used this power to murder bills they
didn’t like. Republican Rod Jetton, House Speaker from 2005 to 2010,
was publicly blatant about it when he buried a bill sponsored by Sen.
Matt Bartle on porn regulation, giving it to a committee chaired by
Rep. Johnson. He later said, “Bob Johnson didn’t like Senator Bartle.
And I didn’t much care for Senator Bartle... I knew that Johnson was
not going to buckle under pressure from Bartle.”

The Senate President Pro Tem has the same
set of powers.

Party leaders control the rank-and-file committee
membership.

The legislators who are chosen to be the heads of the
Democratic and Republican factions have the power to appoint or remove
their fellow legislators from a committee. These party bosses are known
as the “Majority Leader” and “Minority Leader”. If they don’t like you,
you won’t get on a committee, or you’ll be shuffled off to unimportant
committees.

Parties use the Majority and Minority Leaders to keep
their members voting in lockstep on “important” issues. If you vote
independently, you get punished. One instance of this involved House
Representative Keith English, a Democrat from Florissant. English voted
with Republicans to override the Democratic Governor Nixon’s veto on a
tax-cut bill in 2014. The very next day, the Democratic Minority
Leader, Jake Hummel, stripped English of all four of his assigned
committees. (In 2013, Jake Hummel did a similar thing to Rep. Penny Hubbard over her votes - updated 3/8/16)

There are powerful committees and there are weak
committees.

The Budget Committees – in both chambers – are examples of
powerful committees. By themselves, they control how much every
individual part of government gets funded. The House also recently
instituted a two-tier committee scheme that created 13 extremely
powerful “Select Committees”. They give the final approval on
all bills from nearly all of the other committees.

Some committees are powerful because their
responsibilities cover a topic that is always important, such as
education or criminal law. Others are temporarily important when an
issue comes up, like the Ferguson riots, but then fade back to
obscurity when the problem is “addressed”. Then there are committees
that serve only as glorified clerical staff, such as the Administration
and Accounts Committee, which distributes supplies for the House, or
the Ethics Committee, which hears the rare complaints about fellow
legislators, but does no investigation of its own.

The system is designed so that the longer a person has
served in a chamber, the more clout they have. Confusing jargon,
obscure rules, and established cliques create high barriers to entry
for “freshman” legislators who wish to take part in lawmaking. To make
matters worse, committee assignments are made almost always on the
basis of seniority and party loyalty.
(Click here
for an analysis of party and seniority)

The Senate has even institutionalized the problem. In that
chamber, bills are heard in order of the sponsor’s seniority – not by
the order in which they were filed. So even if a bill get filed weeks
later than another, it will get priority if its sponsor has several
terms of office under his belt.

Why does all of this matter? It matters because it makes some
legislators more powerful than other legislators; which means that your
vote doesn’t carry the same weight as other votes.

In other words, voters are not treated equally. There are
winners and losers, haves and have-nots.

Can this situation be changed? It most certainly can. Many of
the problems of unequal representation are the product of longstanding
House rules and Senate rules. All it takes to get rid of them, is a
simple majority vote of legislators who are willing to change the
system.

There is an example
proposal for change which you can view by
clicking here.
I believe this system would provide a much more even
distribution of power among legislators, while also fighting special
interests and partisan influence.

In the meantime, however, we’ll have to make do with the Kingdom state
of Missouri. So cross your fingers, and pray that
your representative is one of the “more equal” ones.

Jon Schuessler is a Volunteer leader in
Jefferson
County, and the chairman for Missouri Volunteers for Government
Reform, a
Political Action Committee (PAC) of the Volunteer Movement. Click
here to
read his bio or contact him.